Hearing Notice

Rules and Regulations

Motivations and Goals

Over the course of the first 10 years our community has fallen into disarray, and our property values have suffered because of it. Countless violation letters were mailed during that span, most of which were ignored. The current Board seeks to rectify this situation, and has created a Fine Committee to do just that. Violations to the Rules and Regulations will now have consequences that cannot be ignored. Fines will be issued, which are legally binding and will go on the estoppel, which must be cleared before you can sell your home.

The primary goal of the Fine Committee is not to collect fines. The primary goal is to improve the safety and appearance of our community, thus raising all our property values back to where they should be. We need your help and cooperation in order to do this, it is in all of our best interests. Any fines we do collect will help pay for aesthetic services such as litter pickup, edging, pressure washing and also possibly lower our monthly HOA fees.

Process

The fine process described below is taken from our Governing Documents and the FL statutes. Whenever possible we try to strike a balance between leniency and available resources. This cycle will repeat every 1-2 months, or as volunteer resources decide.

Violations are reported to the Board by the Fine Committee and by concerned homeowners.

The Board determines which units will receive fine notices in the mail (possibly email).

For simplicity, fines will be $100 per unit, per cycle. Fines are authorized to be up to $100 per day per violation, so higher fines will be an option for repeat offenders.

Owners who receive a fine notice will be entitled to attend the Fine Hearing for that cycle to request a waive.

By law, the hearing will be scheduled at least 14 days from the date which the letter was mailed in order to give time to correct the violation.

No phone calls are permitted regarding the hearing (all communication must be in writing).

At the Hearing, the Committee will vote on your fine. A majority vote is required to uphold your fine. A tie means the fine is waived.

In some cases, simply correcting the issue is enough to get the fine waived. It is not our goal to punish anyone, we are simply looking for your cooperation to help us improve our community.

The fine will not be imposed (put on the ledger) until after the vote at the hearing.

No Shows

Someone must represent the property at the hearing. It can be the owner, property manager, tenant or attorney. Keep in mind tenants must represent the owner, not themselves, since they are not members of the HOA. Under special circumstances a board/committee member can speak on your behalf. The committee will vote on your case even if no one shows up to represent you, but the likelihood of getting waived is much lower in that event. Also, there may be additional violations on the property that need to be addressed at the hearing. As a courtesy the committee will combine these violations so you don't have to attend multiple hearings and pay multiple fines, and more importantly this gives you the opportunity to waive them all at once. If you don't show up and you have multiple outstanding violations your fine will most likely be upheld.

Warnings

There has been some feedback regarding warnings. Warnings have proven completely ineffective in the past, and was a considerable waste of time and money (mailings, admin costs, etc). Since our fine process gives you the opportunity to correct the issue and waive the fine, you have the power to convert your fine notice into a warning, therefore an extra warning step is not required. In the future we will consider sending email warnings, but this is not possible if we do not have your email. Please provide your email on the Contact Us page or send email to the Board or Titan.

Violation Stickers

For certain violations such as solid/yard waste, a violation sticker/flyer may be placed on the offending item. This has the advantage of communicating the violation immediately as opposed to waiting for a fine letter/hearing which could take 3-6 weeks or even longer. Another advantage is that it gives you an opportunity to rectify before the fine is actually issued, which means you can skip the hearing process altogether (send us an email to verify). Finally, it will discourage other residents from "copy cat" infractions.

Rectifying Issues

If you need assistance rectifying issues, feel free to email the HOA. We can help connect you with a contractor to rectify your issue (at your expense). If you have a contractor that you are happy with, please share with us so others in the community can take advantage.